Early bird registration is now open for the 2017 NECRWA Let Your Imagination Take Flight conference! Click here to register! The conference will be held on April 7-8, 2017 at the Boston Marriott hotel in Burlington, MA.

The Friday master class will be on “Writing Sexual and Romantic Tension for All Heat Levels” taught by Molly O’Keefe. Keynote speakers will be Joanna Bourne and Zoe York. A full list of the workshops and panels can be found on the Workshops page. And check out the agents and editors who will be taking your pitches!

A workshop for writers who want to create scorching hot dominant heroes while still incorporating real-life BDSM community values. There are complex and valid reasons why female readers may choose to fantasize about a range of non-consensual scenarios in romance novels, from the classic “kidnapped into a sheik’s harem” to the currently popular “fated to be an alpha werewolf’s mate” and “met a billionaire who won’t take no for an answer.” But I feel it’s very important to distinguish between fantasy scenarios and depictions of real life. These fantasy archetypes are “safe” fantasies for women to indulge precisely because they are NOT real life. But how do real-life BDSM doms fit in the pantheon of romance archetypes? In the real BDSM community, doms who come across as pushy assholes or stalkers rarely last. This workshop will explore the intersections between what romance readers and real-life submissives are looking for in heroes and doms, and how romance writers can bring realistic depictions of domination and male dom personas into their work. I’ll present the results of surveys I took of both BDSM lifestyle submissives and avid romance readers which showed many parallels and a few surprising contrasts.

Cecilia Tan is “simply one of the most important writers, editors, and innovators in contemporary American erotic literature,” according to Susie Bright. RT Magazine awarded her Career Achievement in Erotic Romance in 2015 and their prestigious Pioneer Award. Tan’s BDSM romance novel Slow Surrender (Hachette/Forever, 2013) also won the RT Reviewers Choice Award in Erotic Romance and the Maggie Award for Excellence from the Georgia Romance Writers. She is the author of many books including the Magic University Series, Secrets of a Rock Star series, and Daron’s Guitar Chronicles, several collections of short stories, and even some nonfiction books on baseball. In 2017 she will launch a new urban fantasy series at Tor Books entitled The Vanished Chronicles. She lives in the Boston area with her lifelong partner corwin and three cats.

Bestselling author Dee Davis worked in association management before turning her hand to writing. She is the author of over thirty novels and novellas, including her newest, Cottage in the Mist and the A-Tac series. When not frantically trying to meet a deadline, Dee spends her time in her Connecticut farmhouse with her husband, and Cardigan Welsh Corgis.

We will be electing a new president and treasurer to a two-year term very soon. Here are the bios of our two candidates:

President – Jackie Horne

I joined NECRWA in 2011 in hopes of transferring the skills I earned during a decade of work in children’s book publishing and a subsequent foray into academia (during which I earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. in children’s literature) into a new career as a historical romance novelist. Knowing that the best way to meet new people in any organization is to volunteer, I worked at my first conference, and the following year, ran for the Board position of Treasurer. Since 2012, I have served the chapter in that capacity, keeping track of our chapter funds and paying our chapter bills. But I’m eager to trade in the checkbook and spreadsheets for the more people-oriented work required of a chapter President.

I still keep several toes in academia. I am currently serving as the Chair of the Children’s Literature Association’s Publications Advisory Board, which reviews potential scholarly books for publication. And I also write about the intersections of romance and gender on my blog, Romance Novels for Feminists. But the bulk of my time is committed to writing and publishing historical romance. Since joining NEC, I have self-published two novels under my pen name, Bliss Bennet: A Rebel without a Rogue and A Man without a Mistress. A Lady without a Lord is due out this coming fall. Those books would still just be visions in my imagination without all the support and encouragement I’ve received from my fellow NEC members.

Publishing, particularly romance publishing, is in the midst of a great period of upheaval. As President of NEC, I would encourage our organization to find ways to support the careers of all romance writers, whether they are traditionally published, self-published, or some combination of the two.

Treasurer – Stephanie Saccoccio

I joined NECRWA in 2008 after typing “THE END” on my first romance novel. We won’t discuss that book, it’s very comfortable lining the bottom of my desk drawer. Over the years I’ve learned so much and I love being a member of this chapter. As an avid reader for years and a newbie writer, I’d finally found a group of people that understood that having voices inside your head wasn’t a bad thing. After years of volunteering at conferences and a two-year stint as the program chair for Rhode Island Romance Writers, I’m ready to take on a larger role in NECRWA. I’ve been a mortgage underwriter for multiple national banks for the last decade, and I was a tax preparer for a year. I’m very organized and detail oriented. I think I would be a great fit for chapter treasurer.

Thinking about wading into the waters of self publishing? Just snagged your rights back? Looking for the next indie trend?

Megan Frampton, an author as well as Pronoun’s Author Community Manager, shares her experience with Pronoun, a free self-publishing platform that take the mystery and confusion out of self publishing. She’ll give an overview of the essential steps in self publishing a book, and explain the digital tools available to all authors, and answer questions about the traditional-to-hybrid transition. She’ll also discuss how authors who choose not to publish with Pronoun can take advantage of their analytic tools and what Pronoun’s community site, The Verbs, offers to authors of all types and genres.

Megan Frampton grew up in a remote town in New Hampshire where she devoured every book of fiction in her well-read parents’ library. An English literature major at Barnard College with double minors in political science and religion, Megan wrote and edited reviews for a music industry magazine for fifteen years. Eventually, she became editor-in-chief and went on to develop conference programs for the industry. She worked as the community manager for Heroes and Heartbreakers, a romance novel website and now works for Pronoun. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son. She has written Contemporary Romance for William Morrow as Megan Caldwell and Historical Romance for Random House Loveswept under her own name. She has just concluded the Dukes Behaving Badly series for Avon and is working on her next series.

The 2017 Let Your Imagination Take Flight Conference will be held on April 7-8 at the Boston Marriott in Burlington, MA. Check out our Facebook page for the latest announcements about speakers, workshops and workshop submissions, agents and editors, and more.

So you’ve written a book, now what? Where do you start your revisions? How can you analyze your book to know the revisions you make are the right ones? In this workshop, we’ll talk about using a storyboard to analyze your book and plan your revisions.

Ever since Megan Ryder discovered Jude Deveraux and Judith McNaught while sneaking around the “forbidden” romance section of the library one day after school, she has been voraciously devouring romance novels of all types. Now a romance author in her own right, Megan pens sexy contemporary novels about family and hot lovin’ with the boy next door.

Are you stuck in your manuscript? Searching for new ideas? Anxious to talk to other writers about what you’re working on? We’ll breakup into small groups on June 26 and talk about our work. It is not necessary to bring pages, but do so if you think it will be helpful. Just be prepared to talk about your work or help someone else brainstorm theirs.